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In connection with the special exhibition "Gallow, wheel and burning at the stake - insights into places of horror" the Neanderthal Museum carried out a unique experiment to recreate a burning at the stake as an historical way of execution in the winter of 2009. Up to now similar experiments focussed exclusively on the burning of a corpse as a prehistoric funeral practice. This experiment was based on an illustrated written source from 1800 by the executioner Johann Ernst Clausen of the town Lemgo, in which flammable materials, their amounts and a plan for building a stake for burning a person is described in detail. The experiment aimed at testing the construction plan, checking on the exact termination of an execution at the burning stake, to find possible accompanying phenomena such as the smell of burning and to document the traces of a burning at the stake in the archaeological evidence.